Playing Dead
by phoenixfyre13
Summary: Sirius has discovered the trick to staying sane in the darkest pit of hell imaginable. But the trick is on him when memories of the past become both his blessing and his curse. Sirius POV, Azkaban era.


b Title: /b Playing Dead

b Author: /b lj user"phoenixfyre13" 

b Summary: /b Sirius has discovered the trick to staying sane in the darkest pit of hell imaginable. But the trick is on him when memories of the past become both his blessing and his curse.

b Rating: /b PG-13

b Warnings: /b Rated above for dark themes and some strong language. No fluff ahead, folks. Nothing but pure, unadulterated angst.

b Word Count: /b 1,200ish

b Author's Note: /b Prompts were Playing Dead and the following lyrics:

From my window I can see the mountain in snow

From my window I will shut my eyes and let go

Promise me you'll always be around when I fall

And when I call

Dog On Wheels, by Belle and Sebastian

lj-cut text"Playing Dead" 

He wasn't sure what was worse – the silence or the sounds.

The silence, when it happened, was not merely the absence of sound. In fact, there was nothing absent about this silence. This was the silence that always seems to follow a catastrophic event, a silence so loud one wishes to speak just to make it disappear. It was oppressive, meant to crush the soul and rip into the fabric of the mind in terrifyingly tiny strips. It was black, heavy, and at its peak, almost unbearable.

Then again, the sounds that followed, ebbing and flowing around him, didn't win too many points either.

For when they came, the sounds were unlike anything one would hear from a normal living creature. There was no laughter, no quiet murmuring, no lively conversations about the latest quittich match or the newest sound to be heard on the WWN. No, these were the sounds of people trying to hold on to life, attempting to reattach the fragments of their minds and souls that were left when those cold, rattling whispers were through with them. The screams and groans echoed in the cavernous, dingy cells, overpowered only by the occasional titter of those whose minds were too far gone for salvation, by the weeping of those who were on the black precipice of insanity. There was an almost constant muttering from more than one source that he instantly recognized as those trying to convince themselves that those tattered, repulsive creatures would not glide once again to their cages, sucking the life from them until eventually they would not be able to escape even the prison of their own minds.

But one prisoner seemed oblivious to it all, lying on the floor of his cell as the Dementors continued their nightly round of torture. Sirius Black had found freedom. He had learned how to play dead.

It hadn't been obvious, at first. He hadn't really thought of it at all until a few months into his incarceration. He had been lying on the dirt floor, exhausted from the Dementor's last round through the cells, tired of seeing the image of his dead best friends over and over in his mind's eye and listening to the screams of those down the corridor, when he saw it. High above him, in the small slit of a window that typically did nothing more than toss a spittle of ocean waves into the moldy cavern, sat a seagull, white and still and seemingly unperturbed by the devastation being wrought below him.

Even through the haze of his battered mind, Sirius began to think. Did Dementors affect all living creatures the way they affected wizards? There was only one way to find out.

So, the next time he heard the screams echoing down the hallway and felt his bones begin to grow cold and saw his breath in the stagnant air of his cell, he concentrated everything he had left to his transformation. And as the creature glided past, breath rattling as it sought its prey, all the Dementor could feel was a perplexingly muddled and diluted set of emotions, certainly not worth spending time over when there were so many terrified, tortured souls nearby.

And so he had found the key to his sanity, to his very survival. And, of course, those hours he spent in his black, furry form brought back memories of the only people in this world he had given a damn about, the only ones he could hardly bear to think of, lest the Dementors catch him off guard and have enough emotion to feed off of for a year.

And so Sirius Black had to learn how to play dead to himself as well. Because if he closed his eyes and opened the window of his mind, all he could see was their faces, happy and laughing and young and i alive /i and it was i so /i bloody unfair that they had all lost that, somehow. Here he was, in Azkaban for killing his best friends, his only other friend left in the world believing the lies of that traitorous little rat Peter Pettigrew. And that, he knew, was what hurt most. Even more than picturing James and Lily and Harry in his mind's eye, knowing that Peter had betrayed them all, Remus' distrust cut him so deeply he could hardly stand to think of him.

But think of him he did, especially on a night like tonight, when Padfoot could feel the pull of the full moon outside. And along with the hurt came the flare of anger. What the bloody hell was Moony's problem? What in Merlin's name had Sirius ever done to Remus to make him think he would actually murder the two people he cared for more than anything? James and Lily – they had been his family, Harry like his own son. How i dare /i that ingrateful werewolf bastard even begin to believe that Sirius could even possibly betray his family? He and James – they had opened themselves to Remus, even knowing there was something different about him, even after finding out about his furry little problem. They had all had problems – family, girls, lycanthropy. Typical teenage stuff. But never had Sirius betrayed any of them, and it pissed him off beyond reason that Remus Holier-Than-Thou Lupin had the bloody nerve to call him a traitor.

i Well, not never. /i The little voice Padfoot could still hear in the recesses of his mind reminded him that there was one moment in their friendship that Sirius had put his pettiness and anger in front of the secrets of his friends. The one night that could have changed everything, if James hadn't been there.

And now, there was no James. No Lily, bright and shining and beautiful and so bloody obnoxious he could kill her.

The irony of the thought made him laugh, a short bark that penetrated the night. i You talk a good talk, Black. But you couldn't have hurt her if you tried. /i 

Padfoot whimpered at the thought of them, and even in his animagus form, the very human sorrow and grief of sudden loss still affected him. Merlin, he needed Remus so much right now. He wished with everything in him he could just reach out to him, scream at him in anger, crush him in a hug to assure himself that everything he loved in this world was not lost. That his past – his world – had not been completely destroyed in one blinding flash of light in Godric's Hollow. That there was a glimmer of hope left for truth and redemption. That, dear Merlin, he was still i human. /i 

That was when he felt it. A chill down through his fur, into his bones that left the dog whimpering and the man receding back into the depths of his mind.

i Play dead, or you'll die inside. /i 

And so he closed the window of his memory and let go, releasing a deep, wrenching howl that rent the night and echoed the loss of his family and the aching need for a moment of contact, however primal, with the only being left on earth that knew a fraction of the grief boiling in his brain.

And somewhere across the harsh waves surrounding Azkaban and the rolling hills of England, the werewolf answered the call, baying as the full moon rose high into the night.


End file.
